Pull Up A Stool

Big Boss has been through a lot of incarnations, hasn’t it? It was Tom Cat, which became Pale Ale (it was really owned by the same people), then it became Rock Creek, and that’s when I became involved. Rock Creek became Chesapeake Bay for a very short time and nearly went under. We came back... View Article

What was your background before you turned to brewing? I went to art school for college, then had to figure out a way to make a living. So I became a carpenter/cabinet maker and did that for about 15 years. I became a homebrewer in the mid-’80s and was enamored with the small breweries that... View Article

Congratulations on this anniversary! What’s the most surprising thing to you about the fact that you’re sitting there in Juneau, observing the 25th anniversary of your brewery? Marcy: It went by so fast—in some ways. It seems like forever ago that we were first were trying to raise the money and all that, but on... View Article

What do you bring to brewing from your early background in history and philosophy? That’s a great question, and one I’ve thought about a lot, funnily enough. My approach to brewing is…almost like a “liberal arts” approach. I like to look at different relationships. I use science and craft to help me get there, but... View Article

I recently gave a presentation at the National Homebrewers Conference in San Diego on aging beer on exotic wood, which covered Spanish cedar—they use it to construct the humidor boxes to age cigars and they also use it in the construction of cigar inserts. I also discussed lemon and grapefruit wood aging in the Dos... View Article

In 1976, an ex-Navy man named Jack McAuliffe founded America’s first modern microbrewery, New Albion Brewing Co. in Sonoma, CA. In an era when American brewing was dominated by a few large facilities brewing versions of light lager, McAuliffe hand-built his brewery from the ground up, and brewed full-flavored bottle-conditioned ales in the English tradition.

What do you hope your fans will take away from your Moveable Yeast project? The primary goal of the series was to demonstrate to beer lovers―who may not be as familiar with yeast as, say, homebrewers would be―how large an effect yeast has on the flavor of beer. People talk about malt and hops a... View Article

Tell me about AC Golden. GK: We’re owned by MillerCoors. Pete Coors took a look at how new products like Blue Moon were being developed for the pipeline, and noticed that we weren’t doing many. Largely, what the big brewers have done is spend anywhere from $19 to 30 million developing a brand, developing the... View Article

When Live Oak opened in 1997, you specialized in beer styles that most craft brewers weren’t making. Why did you make that decision? Our first beer was a pilsner. I don’t know if anybody was making any back then—Victory might have been. We started making Czech pilsner because they taste so good and we love... View Article